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There was no mass poverty in the South prior to the War for Southern Independence. Yet after the War poverty became the norm for Southerners and even today Southern per capita income still lags behind the other sections of the U.S.A.6 For example, no one seems to think it unusual that Mississippi, once one of the nation’s richest states, is now and has been since the War the U.S.A.’s poorest state. National7 historians, social scientists or politicians have never asked “Where did all of these poor Southerners come from?” Poverty did not rain down from the sky on Dixie like burning brimstone flung from the hands of an angry God! It was and is the byproduct of Yankee invasion, conquest and continuing occupation of the Confederate States of America.
A Northern visitor shortly after the War celebrated the destruction of the white South he witnessed during his visit when he wrote “The whites are talking of selling their houses or lands to get bread. The fresh tide of Northern enterprise will soon sweep rudely enough against these broken remnants of the ancient regime, and wash them under.”8 The massive destruction of Southern wealth and human resources was the direct cause for the development of tenant farming.9 Sharecropping became the only alternative to starvation for upwards of eight and a half million10 black and white Southerners in “our” reunited country. Remember, sharecropping was not a choice freely made by our people but it was the only alternative left to them by our conquering Northern (i.e. Republican) masters!
Sharecropping is similar to the old western system of “grub staking” for prospectors. A Western “grub staking” merchant would provide the prospector with food and supplies and the prospector would then share a portion of the gold or other precious metals found by the prospector. But grub staking was intended for solitary individuals whereas sharecropping involved entire families. Another important difference was the fact that the western prospector was not bound to the merchant by debt contracts. If he failed to find precious metals he would simply move to another area and the grub staking merchant would lose his investment. The Southern sharecropper was bound to the land via a system of legal debt contracts.11 The interest rate on these debt contracts has been estimated to have been between 50 to 125%.12 At one point in the early 1930s there were upwards of eight and a half million sharecroppers in the South. Of this number 66% were white.13 An efficient sharecropper in 1930s Alabama would clear around $140 dollars in a good year but if the crops failed or if market price for cotton bottomed out, then the sharecropper would end the year owing the “company store,” large landowner, or banker around $80.00.14 Sharecropping was a system that destroyed people, families, the land and much of our Southern society. But from the Northern point-of-view this was acceptable because Southerners were merely paying for the sins of slavery and secession, that is, treason—a “debt” that will never be paid-in-full in this “our” reunited country.
The vast majority of pre-War white Southerners were not a part of the plantation system. Indeed, slaveholders were a minority in the South.15 Most of the plain folk were not even heavily engaged in farming. The primary economic enterprise of the “plain folk” of the old South was as herdsmen with large herds of cattle and hogs roaming the South’s open range.16 They had a healthy life style that stressed out doors activities such as hunting and fishing. Their cattle and hogs provided food and the little cash they needed. Low intensity farming provided vegetables and corn for cattle, the making of bread or liquid adult refreshment. They were a clannish people who relied on family, extended family, friends and neighbors—often referred to collectively as their “kith and kin.” They enjoyed a healthy and relatively care free life style.17 They were often incorrectly and intentionally referred to by Northern writers as “poor white trash.” They were rugged individualists who had little need for local government and even less for one in faraway Washington. Their main demand of government was simply to leave them alone! Thus, when the Federal Empire marched its armies into the South these hardy and self-reliant “plain folk” rallied to the defense of their Southern homeland.18
Pre-War plenty replace by post-War poverty. People opf a conquered nation. (Courtesy LOC)
